Can 3-D Printed Drones Help Save Wildlife?

Can 3-D Printed Drones Help Save Wildlife?

Nov. 14, 2014 - In South Africa's Kruger National Park and throughout much of Africa, rhino and elephant numbers are declining at a rapid rate, because of poachers. Authorities have limited resources to catch poachers and disrupt the illegal wildlife trade, and drones could help them. A worldwide competition, the Wildlife Conservation UAV Challenge, encourages the development of cheaper, easier-to-use drones, with the goal of detecting and deterring poachers before they strike.

Scott “LB” Williams, Director General, Reserve Protection AgencyIt’s a war zone at this point. The value of a rhino horn is worth more than 10 times the value of the rhino alive. Poachers are coming in. They’re well armed. Most of them are coming in in teams now and they come in with assault rifles. And they don’t have the law holding them back.

Aliyah Pandolfi, founder, Wildlife Conservation UAV ChallengeThere’s not a lot of technology solutions or barriers for the poachers. So our goal really is focusing on stopping it before it actually happens. The Wildlife Conservation UAV Challenge is a challenge that is created to motivate and inspire people from around the world to create an unmanned aerial vehicle that would be used for counter-poaching purposes. It’s 137 teams in 29 different countries on 6 continents saying “Yes, we want to be a part of this initiative, we want to help find a solution.”

Scott “LB” WilliamsThe idea behind using a drone for counter-poaching is to get out there and try to detect the poachers before they get to the animals. With a UAV you can actually cover half a days worth of walking within a matter of minutes.

Aliyah PandolfiIt’s not about making a great aircraft it’s about being able to process that data on board. And that’s where the new sensors and the little tiny computers and the chips become exciting. If there are poachers in the park, how many are there? Where are they located? What types of weapons are they carrying? What’s their proximity to the animals? And also what’s the best route for a ranger to go there and stop the poachers.

Michael Balazs, Team RhinoshieldBy being involved in this challenge we’re hoping to push this technology to the limit. 3D printing allows us to design platforms that are very quick and easy to produce. And the great thing about using a smartphone is that it has a number of built-in sensors already: Bluetooth, Wi-Fi, has LTE communications, but the thing that we leverage the most is the camera and the processing power. Where we are now is we’ve developed a 3D printed plane, we’ve developed the apps that run on the phone and we’ve got the sensors that we want to put on the system. All that remains at this point is put it all together, put it up in the air and make sure that it does what we hope it does.

Aliyah PandolfiFrom the perspective of why we started the challenge I’d like to see the rhino poaching numbers go down drastically. And then from the point of technology we really hope that people are going to start seeing that a challenge can be a great way of motivating people. If we have technology we can use it to protect the world we live in

Can 3-D Printed Drones Help Save Wildlife?

Nov. 14, 2014 - In South Africa's Kruger National Park and throughout much of Africa, rhino and elephant numbers are declining at a rapid rate, because of poachers. Authorities have limited resources to catch poachers and disrupt the illegal wildlife trade, and drones could help them. A worldwide competition, the Wildlife Conservation UAV Challenge, encourages the development of cheaper, easier-to-use drones, with the goal of detecting and deterring poachers before they strike.